Minimum Wage

There is a lot of blather about Social Security now-a-days, including Rick Perry's remark about the "Ponzi scheme' aspect of it. Well, as someone who worked for decades and paid into the Social Security Trust Fund (?) for those decades, I consider my meagre check for $1,132 a month to be a kind of retainer for my 40 to 50 hrs a week retired "employment."

President Obama has recently suggested that we "do the math." OK, if we divide the amount which arrives electronically to my bank per month by 40 or 50 my present payment comes out in the six to seven dollar a month range, at best. In her original edition of "Nickled and Dimed" Barbara Ehrenreich (sp?) says that one must make in the range of $14, $15 dollars to live a minimal existence (?).

And that means that you must reach into what minimal amount of retirement money one just might have to even exist. Ehrenreich's calculations were based upon 1992 figures, as I recall; it would be instructive what the revisited edition gives as the amount per hour that one must "earn" in order to just exist. As you can tell, I am no economist. But I know full well that when medical considerations get on the horizon, when there is a problem with the refrigerator, a dog needs to go to the vet, when the fuel oil needs to be delivered, the brakes have to be done, and tires replaced, ETC. that small anxieties dance on a trouble horizon, ever closer. The blather includes the "news" that Congress may just not be able to pay the bills, that their squabbling may just shut the government down. "Lord have mercy."